Achieving a Gold Standard for your Intranet

Based on the five-rings motif of the Olympic movement, intranet expert Martin White offered practical and very useful advice for all intranet professionals in an inspiring session at the recent KMWorld 2010 conference in Washington DC.

With the London Olympics fast approaching, Martin shared his views on what intranet professionals need to do to prepare and get their act together during 2011. His 5 Olympic rings had the following headlines:

Supporting teams

Establishing performance standards

Using sprint development approaches

Discovering hidden talent

Overcoming potential hurdles.

Apart from some highly relevant anecdotes touching on among other things French weddings and snooker, the presentation included helpful slides, illustrations and examples to explain each of the headlines. Particularly interesting was Martin’s view on how support from “T-shaped managers” are essential for making collaboration work. A T-shaped manager in Martin’s view is somebody with department “depth”, but also a breadth of experience and a good reputation across the organisation.

Another takeaway for me was how the business environment is changing due to the mobile revolution. Highly mobile employees present a new set of requirements, and with a show hands, only 1 in the audience had yet developed a mobile persona for their intranet.

Finally, Martin concluded with a set of “Action This Day” points, including getting rid of content that has no value, using search logs as a powerful diagnostic tool and being a champion of information management.

Next steps towards the gold standard

Martin has not yet shared his slides on his blog, but you can read his conference summary and find his contact details on his site.

Sign up for one of our many groups for intranet professionals and meet with colleagues from other organisations and hear what actions they are taking.

While the Aarhus 11 conference is almost a year away, I’m thrilled to be able to announce that Martin White is confirmed as a speaker. You can sign up early for substantial discounts.